Ann Wright recalls that a U.S. military warship shot down Iran Air Flight 655 in 1988 and Washington insisted afterwards that it was correct in doing so.
Global Hawk surveillance drone. (U.S. Air Force)
The Iranian military shot down a U.S. spy drone last week, bringing the two countries to the brink of war.
Iran said the drone was over Iranian airspace, as the country’s foreign minister detailed in a tweet.
The U.S. says the drone, a $22 million RQ-4A Global Hawk, was in international airspace.
A missile fires from forward launcher of Vincennes during a 1987 exercise. The same launcher was used in Flight 655’s downing. (Service Depicted: Navy, via Wikimedia Commons)
But why should one believe the U.S. with its history of lying?
Remember back to 1988, during the Iran-Iraq war, when the USS Vincennes, a guided missile cruiser, shot down Iran Air Flight 655 with all 290 people on board including 66 children. The regularly scheduled passenger flight was over Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf on the routine flight path shortly after taking off from Bandar Abbas heading on the 28-minute flight to Dubai. Its transponder was signaling it was a civilian aircraft.
The U.S. warship was in Iranian territorial waters after one of its helicopters drew warning shots from Iranian speedboats that were guarding Iranian waterways.
Yet, the U.S. maintained that it was correct in shooting down a civilian aircraft that it said the crew thought was a military aircraft. It took years before the U.S. offered recompense through the International Court of Justice.
When a group of us were on a citizens’ peace delegation to Iran in February we visited the Tehran Peace Museum. We knew from previous trips that the wound of the destruction of Iran Air Flight 655 was still raw. This time we presented the director of the peace museum with a book made by a member of our delegation with the names of all of those killed on Flight 655, along with our apologies.
Scenario Fulfillment
Screen displays in the combat information center on board Vincennes. (Service Depicted, Navy/Tim Masterson via Wikimedia Commons)
In a 2000 BBC documentary titled “The Other Lockerbie,” and in an M.I.T. study of the Flight 655 shoot-down, U.S. government officials stated in a written answer that they believed the shoot down of Iran Air 655 may have been caused by a simultaneous psychological condition among the 18 bridge crew of Vincennes, called “scenario fulfillment,” which is said to occur when people are under pressure. U.S. officials said that in such a situation, the crew will carry out a training scenario, believing it to be reality while ignoring sensory information that contradicts the scenario. In the case of this incident, the training scenario was an attack by a lone military aircraft when in fact, in reality, the aircraft was a civilian passenger plane on a regularly scheduled flight.
Let’s hope Bolton and Pompeo’s “scenario fulfillment” does not lead the White House to further military confrontation, much less an attack on Iran.
Ann Wright served 29 years in the U.S. Army/Army Reserves and retired as a colonel. She was a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and served in U.S. Embassies in Nicaragua, Grenada, Somalia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Micronesia, Afghanistan and Mongolia. She resigned from the U.S. government in March 2003 in opposition to President George W. Bush’s war on Iraq. She is co-author of “Dissent: Voices of Conscience.”
This article first appeared on Code Pink.
Why would anyone in government lie?
Pompeo: ‘I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It’s – it was like – we had entire training courses…’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfrhATD4nM0
Psychological “scenario fulfillment” under pressure is an excellent reason to keep the US military within its borders.
“Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
And who do you believe about the INF treaty, Trump/Bolton or former weapons inspector Scott Ritter (who was right about Iraq’s non-existent WMDs)?
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/what-facts-how-politics-trumped-intel-in-nuke-treaty-pullout/
Then there were the ships damaged by limpet mines.
It turns out that Syrian underwater oil pipes were also recently damaged by limpet mines, and Syria is an Iranian ally. https://southfront.org/sabotage-operation-targets-syrian-underwater-oil-pipes-video-photos/
I wonder why the US didn’t accuse Iran for those attacks as well.
No evidence of limpet mine damage to the ships was ever given. Appears to be propaganda.
Psychological “scenario fulfillment” under pressure is an excellent reason to keep the US military within its borders.
Hello Ann Wright and Everyone, Thank you for this article. Two things come to mind immediately. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident during the Vietnam Era and The Bedford Incident (a fictional book and movie) which explores how people react under pressure. The word of the US government is less than zero unless it can be verified, not once but countless times over! If the government’s spoken word is heard then the odds on favorite is lying by infinite minus one! If it is unsaid then it is infinite in favor of lying.
Excellent article and a reminder of what these psychopath neocons are capable of.
Iran–U.S. RQ-170 incident (Wikipedia)
“the aircraft was detected in Iranian airspace 225 kilometers (140 mi) from the border with Afghanistan.” That was the Iranian claim, and it matches where the drone landed/was brought down. In general, American aircraft were found over the territory of other states with manifest intention to violate the territory without permission.
I’m very curious as to whether it was a shock to our military/political leadership to see Iran publish a detailed, virtually minute-by-minute track of the drone from the moment it took off until it was destroyed? Iran could have just made it up, but I doubt it. Is this the capability we expect from Iran’s defense radar-tracking system, or was it a surprise?
I think our military planners had two important shocks in the last few years. One was that Russia launched cruise missiles from small boats in the Caspian Sea that flew 1400 km and accurately struck terrorists largest within Syria (isn’t that something only we can do) and the bigger shock was the March 1, 2018 speech by Putin outlining the development of a whole group of new strategic nuclear weapons.
This might be another smaller example of an unpleasant surprise.
Good article & some excellent detailed comments also.
For those more casual readers who may not be as historically oriented as the author or many of the commentators, I would simply say: REMEMBER THE IRAQ WMDs IN 2003. That has been the most BLATANTLY OBVIOUS US propaganda fabrication in the ~60 years that I’ve been following politics here in the US, and what’s unique about it was that it was essentially DEBUNKED BY ITS CREATORS. Early-on, the US MIC (including the intel agencies) & the US (& British) mainstream media were ALL trying to outdo each other in telling us about how dangerous Iraq’s surely were, and skeptical opinions were just ‘Saddam lovers’. Then after we illegally attacked them, killed at least 10’s (if not 100’s) of thousands and destroyed much of their infrastructure, and enabled the execution of their leader, it was found that THE WHOLE WMDs STORY WAS BULLSHIT! It was proven to be BS by the US invaders who literally couldn’t find ANY WMDs.
To me this was a clear-cut case of war-mongering deception, with no plausible extenuating circumstances and NOT something that could be seemingly explained-away as ‘individual mistakes’, as was too often done in previous smaller events. It was LARGE and INSTITUTIONAL. If you can have unquestioning faith in US political/‘intelligence’ statements after knowledge of the ‘Iraq WMDs episode’, you’re NOT working on a rational basis.
Some of us expected Bush & Co. to “discover” phony WMD that imported or made themselves.
They must have been sorely tempted but possibly there were just too many prying eyes.
Yeah, I have to admit that I WAS surprised that Cheney/Rumsfeld/et al DIDN’T ‘phony-up’ some stuff, but as Thomas notes below, maybe it was because there was a spotlight on it and they thought they couldn’t pull it off? Or maybe it was hard to fake biological weapons?
this is the same america that has illegally ‘intervened’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere and won’t go home? that wants to ‘democratize’ Venezuela and blow North Korea off the planet??
say no more
For a country that can fire rockets into space and guide them to successful landings on other planets, moons or even asteroids using sophisticated remote controls many millions of miles distant from the target, somebody’s either doing some mighty shoddy work with these drones or else someone is lying. Since Iran is the country that risks “being obliterated” in this confrontation (as per our president’s promises), why would they be trying to lie themselves into oblivion? Meanwhile, where is the public outrage at Washington’s unmistakable attempt, using these drones, to provoke what would clearly be a genocidal war if they are serious about leveling Iran and killing millions of its non-combatant civilians in the process?
It seems that we American consumers of the alleged world news of the day can never trust a word conveyed over the mainstream media. Earlier in the week we were apprised by sources like Drudge and Google that Tulsi Gabbard had won her Democratic primary debate by a wide margin. Yesterday we learn from “mainstream” sources like WaPo and Nate Silver’s 538.com that, no, it was really Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and maybe Cory Booker who were the big winners when all 20 candidates somehow got statistically normalized. Gabbard was really amongst the losers and the MSM didn’t want to talk about her any more than the moderators wanted to question her on stage. Moreover, (ya can’t make this up as they go to this ploy already!) “Russian Bots” were blamed for deliberately skewing the Google data.
Good gravy, Putin just can’t keep his fingers out of our democracy!!! And, if you believe that, I’ve a million acres in South Florida just waiting to be developed into affordable housing for retiring boomers that I can sell to you for a song (just bring your own pumps, trenchers and other earth moving equipment to drain a few feet of standing water).
https://russia-insider.com/en/tulsi-gabbard-dominates-google-search-during-wednesday-debate-left-blames-russian-bots/ri27351
You must be properly instructed in your perception of reality.
https://russia-insider.com/en/democratic-debate-aftermath-media-ignore-crowd-favorite-tulsi-gabbard-shocking/ri27354
Excelente
I was most disappointed by the Real News Network, for whom Aaron Mate used to be a video news host. They had a long, two part, discussion of the first night with two distinquished left leaning intellectuals, and in all their discussion they never mentioned Tulsi Gabbard- it’s like she didn’t exist.
There is no special reason to believe the US about much, particularly not anything that might appear advantageous to its designs.
Besides, there’s no particularly good or innocent reason a spy drone, if that is all that it was, should have been in international airspace next to Iran, The US is and has been the only aggressor in a grossly asymmetrical situation since before 1953.
Both links have maps and calculations of the flight path.
http://johnhelmer.net/against-the-blitz-wolf-russian-reinforcements-for-irans-defence-in-war-against-all/#more-21069
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/06/trump-is-afraid-of-a-shooting-war-but-iran-has-also-other-means-to-damage-him.html#more
Thank you Ann for clarifying the shoot down of Air 655. It was only many years later HW Bush admitted the USS Vincennes was not in international waters as they had claimed, but in Iranian waters. But he also pulled the US machoism out of his sour bloodstream to say ‘ We are the US, we will apologize to no one, ever’
With Presidents like that the world can see the arrogance and corruption. The US will have a very hard time with their ‘proofs’ in the future hopefully. The Iranians just presented the radar data to the UN to show the flight path of the drone. The US will continue to lie, but hopefully some individuals will grow a spine and defend international law. If the Iranians are successful in bypassing the Swift monetary system things may change, as the US sanctions will lose a lot of teeth. I hope this is successful.
A few politicians have even now said they will not allow NATO to be involved in any war with Iran. I’m sure Bolton is close to a stroke hearing that news if it becomes a reality.
Local News and Political commentary get nowhere near a
Deep Rooted sense of The Reality of Truth,
and are, Primarily, NOT FULLY INTERESTED IN
Nor Seeking A Reality of, WHAT IS The TRUTH … .
http://www.talmudblasphemy.com/judaism_vs_zionism.html
When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the Truth? Using Sherlock Holmes method at ascertaining how to arrive at the Truth, you can assess America’s version of events compared to Iran’s to determine who exactly is telling the Truth? Using this methodology of process elimination to determine Lies from the Truth you reach the conclusion based on America’s History of endless deceitful behaviour to conclude that the US lied about their Spydrones true location? Confirmation was proved when the Iranians picked up the wreakage in their Territorial Waters, not International Waters! Anything the United States of America usually says is untrustworthy & defies rational belief once evidence is provided to refute their falsehoods & they always cower behind a pack of Propagandist lies based on their duplicitous History of immoral deceitfulness & BS? From blatant falsehoods such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that lead to the Vietnam War, to fabricated lies such as Iraq’s non- existent WMD’s that justified US invasion in Iraq to Libya & Gaddafi’s Rape squads BS lies & now with Venezuela & Iran’s so called malevolent behaviour, the fact is no one with half a brain believes America’s BS lies & phoney, fabricated crisis generation & blatant immoral actions, all to mask their true intentions which is to thieve & steal other Nations Oil & Resources! And what makes it worst & even more laughable is that America has with the Trump Administration & Trump, a serial Liar as their President, who repeatedly lies & Bolton & Pompeo, who freely admits to lying & stealing as CIA Director in a Organization that specialises in this practice as a US prerequisite to their Job description & mandate! Is it any wonder why the Iranians hate the deceitful American Govt after it murdered 290 of its Citizens in the downed Airplane incident & today is waging Economic Terrorism to murder more of its Citizens by conducting what amounts to a Medieval siege on Iran (& also Venezuela) too starve its people to death based on nothing but American lies & propaganda? That’s from the sad, stupid, failed & incompetent American CIA playbook tactic to Regime change a hostile Nation who opposes US Hegemon ambitions? American lies overthrew Iran’s Democracy & Elected Leader Mossadeph via a CIA regime change coup then installed their American puppet Leader, the Shah! Iran then rose up & removed this US installed crook, thereby re- establishing their own Sovereignty by Nationalising their Oil & then booting out the corrupt US Oil Companies who where raping & stealing Iranian Resources for their own greedy benefit! And the Truth is America has never forgiven Iran for this humiliating defeat & assault on their power projection? Any resistance & pushback on American power was to be crushed or else others might also resist against the American Imperial Empire! Unfortunately for America & especially in the Internet information age, its lies & deceitful actions can’t be hidden anymore & its propaganda & false flags are being exposed for the incredulous lies that they are?
Generally true except that the notion that the US Mideast intentions are to “steal other Nations Oil & Resources.” Since 1953 when the US overthrew democracy in Iran for 40% of the UK oil concession, it has not received any favorable resource deals in the Mideast. We did not get much oil from Iraq, and got no price concessions. Same for US attacks on zionist targets Syria, Egypt, Libya, and many others. US wars have disrupted oil supplies, and have had no favorable effect on US prices for generations. The US can buy oil anywhere for the same price as everyone else without wars of aggression.
The US MIC wants to attack any small country to pose as heroes, although they are all murderers for hire using fake patriotism to lead uneducated fools. They are not the reason that the US aggression is in the Mideast.
The sole reason for US aggression in the Mideast since 1947 is zionism. Truman, said to have Jewish ancestry, took a zionist campaign bribe to twist arms at the newly-formed US-financed UN to approve of Israel. Even if you reject that, it is clear that it was a foolish move welcomed only by zionists, who insisted upon the worst possible location for a Jewish state, due to their religious fanaticism.
There are no rational grounds for a Jewish empire in the Mideast, when
1. There are no more living survivors of the Jewish disasters of WWII to gain thereby;
2. A Jewish homeland was not a sensible method of helping Jewish survivors;
3. Palestine was the worst place in the world to choose for a Jewish homeland, due to opposition there;
4. Everyone’s ancestors had empires there, as there were doubtless thousands of empires there in the million or so years in which all of our ancestors migrated through N Africa from our common origins in SE Africa, so we all have equal claims to an empire there;
5. No one deserves an empire, even when their ancestors had one there;
There are also no rational grounds that Jews should be accorded special privileges in the US:
1. To control US foreign policy to dump money on Israel as “aid”;
2. To control US mass media so that nearly everyone accepts zionist lies about the Mideast and special privileges for zionists;
3. To control nearly every US politician through bribes, like those of all of the top ten donors to Clinton;
4. To rent the US military for pennies on the dollar to Israel to kill hundreds of thousands of innocents in the Mideast to support zionist land thefts;
5. To terminate democracy in the US for the advantage of one of the most racist groups in history.
So I think we should be careful not to fall for the zionist excuse, that the US will gain money via oil by supporting zionist aggression.
And for those who may attempt the “anti-semitism” propaganda retort, we all know that:
1. Semites include Arab as well as Jewish groups, so the term is incorrect;
2. Most zionists are not Jews, and many Jewish people are not zionists;
3. I have never met an anti-Jewish person, but there are many anti-zionists for good reason;
4. My Jewish friends maintain that they have never experienced anti-Jewish discrimination;
5. There is no other group that demands a special word for discrimination against itself, and then pretends that it is a unique phenomenon not susceptible to rational analysis, but only the pronunciations of zionists;
6. Zionists use this unique term to denounce all who will not agree to their demands for special privileges;
7. There is no racism in denouncing zionists as the fanatical racists they truly are.
Believe NOTHING the USG says unless they prove it. The real story here? The chicken hawks in the Thump regime believed the same crap as Bob Dryfuss over on the Nation – Iran’s military was moth eaten. They should have listened to Will Rodgers – if you teach an animal or a person a lesson in meanness, don’t be surprised if they learn it. Shooting down the Iran Air flight was just one of them. Iran couldn’t really do anything about US violation of Iranian back then. Yes, we taught them a lesson in meanness and if the Vincennes were to try that stunt today, you can be guaranteed that she’d be sunk. They would be wise to keep their mouths shut and their trigger fingers scratched.
In 1970-2, I was a radio voice intercept operator with the U.S. Air Force in Berlin. A large part of my job consisted of listening to and recording voice transmissions to and from aircraft flying over East Germany. It was very easy to distinguish transport aircraft, including airliners, from military fighters. The transmissions sounded quite different. Also, we were well aware of the schedules of regularly scheduled airliner flights. Whoever on the Vincennes was listening to the Iranian Airbus just was not doing his job.
I would contend, like many others, that the Vincennes crew were doing exactly the job they were instructed to do by their imperial masters, when they illegally and inexcusably downed the Iranian civil airliner. Your reminiscences from 1970’s Berlin, serve only to reinforce this view.
These comments show who the audience is and what emotion is within. There was no reason to inform the readers of a forgone conclusion. What the next article needs is some facts about the actual event to ponder to prevent prejudging.
What facts there are you referring to DJ old boy, certainly not the historical record. The facts are ALL on the side of us disgusted and informed citizens, Classified information well, that is something else and we can always rely on our government to produce things like the Warren Commission Report, The 9-11 Commission Report and/or the Special Counsel investigation (2017–2019) by former FBI Director Mueller to create even more obfuscation and shovel more obvious lies to the American People, Ask the American Indians about “the facts” or the descendants of African Slaves. Don’t ask former President Obama he isn’t a descendant of slaves and as a former head of the Harvard Law Review, he was entitled to be amazed and offended when President Duerte of the Philippines confronted him during one of his eloquent diatribes with facts and pictures regarding the US occupation of the Philippines. . When is Our Government and the Corporate Media, that is OUR Government ,going to acknowledge facts and apologize for two centuries of deliberate disinformation that it has fed to We the People of this nation and served up to the International Community like cold Spam on a plate? Just the things that have been clearly exposed , not the obvious lies . The Government never tells the truth about anything. Knowledge is power so they like to try and keep it to themselves and degrade and marginalize anyone who has the integrity and audacity to expose their lies. Like for instance the guy who exposed the lies about Yellow cake and WMD’s in Iraq and the woman, can you remember her name, Judith Miller of the New York Times, who shoveled the shit just like Secretary of State Colin Powell did at the UN which led us into this New World Order of continuous wars that are justified because we are the Indefensible, sorry Indispensable Nation that can dictate whatever Bullshit we want no matter who has to die. Congratulate yourself for your own clarity of intellect and stay out of my lane..
For the same reason that we were suppose to believe the ridiculous narrative about Russia bearing the blame for a Malaysian Airliner being shot down over Ukraine . Because the USA Media got in front of the story and said so. Because our press has shed all pretense of objectivity and has surrendered it’s duty to investigate before publishing propaganda, because we now have an office of propaganda in the Pentagon that feeds fact based narrative to the Usual Suspects, Washington Post, NY Times, etc. which they publish unquestioningly and because I told you so. I do not want to have to repeat this. Sear it in your Facebook Profile and adjust your Smartphone settings accordingly. We the People no longer have the right to question pure Bullshit from the 4th Estate.
“Excellent article. History tells us to never trust anything said by our government or its MSM lackeys.
BTW, I believe the word is “transponder”, not “transformer.” — Skip Scott
{Trans – Human } ? ? ?
/\/\/\/\
Does Nietzsche have anything important to say to us, we the current inhabitants of a global age? – – –
::
Whether or not Nietzsche thought that the Eternal Return of Everything was an ontological reality or not (after all it could never be conclusively proven) is not the point. We must act as if it were real. Its function is as the ultimate moral instance in Nietzsche’s entire philosophy.
For indeed, despite some of his histrionic protestations Nietzsche is a moral philosopher.
DID HE NOT CALL FOR A REEVALUATION OF ALL VALUES ? (or, as MLK called for and spoke of, “A Revolution of Values”).
In his writings he (Nietzsche) went a long way towards such a reevaluation. For Nietzsche, everything that encouraged extreme energetic creativity was good, all that stood in its way was bad.
And furthermore, all doctrines, habits, thoughts that steered ones gaze away from the world as experienced by our senses was
delusion, demagoguery, and decadent.
Nietzsche, similar to Tocqueville, Mill, and Mathew Arnold, envisioned a future where people would be culturally, politically, emotionally, and, philosophically castrated. Nietzsche referred to such pitiful creatures as the “last men” or “men without chests”. Individuals purely concerned with their material well being, believing themselves to be perfectly happy in the historically diminished possibilities of their lives. These future beings would be the antithesis to the hero and would experience the current existence of such a person among them as “mad”. In the future there are no great deeds, only herd like obedience. Aldous Huxley wrote an entire book about them: Brave New World.
But what of our world? Are we too “last men” or are we, instead, preparing for the arrival of the overman (Übermensch)?
/\/\/\/\/\/\
In 2009, Stefan Lorenz Sorgner wrote a famous essay comparing Nietzsche’s philosophy with TRANS-HUMANISM- Not surprisingly, he found some strong overlap between the two. In this same essay, Sorgner also coined the expression “autonomous eugenics”. By this he meant the freely chosen physical transformation of the individual through the intervention of technology. Ultimately, according to Sorgner, the how, how much, and why of self-enhancement mediated by future technologies is and should be a moral choice. Not, as in the past, a coercive policy carried out by the state (State Eugenics).
Where I take issue with Sorgner’s provocative article is whether Nietzsche really had the post-human of the Twenty-First century in mind? …Continuing this thought, I suspect that Nietzsche would be initially suspicious of the Trans-Humanist project of human enhancement or transformation. He, being a man of his time, would have expected the coming of the overman to be a question of self-discipline leading to a psychological transformation not a physical one. Indeed, we can ask in what way would a post-human necessarily be better at the self-creation of new life-affirming values than the old human being? Would physical, technological enhancement by itself lead to superior forms of cultural existence? I think Nietzsche would have been skeptical at the prospect.
Arguing now for the otherside and thus beyond Nietzsche, I think Sorgner and other Trans-Humanists are possibly right in assuming that a posthuman would be in a good position to create new values and ways of living. Simply because it is hard to imagine what the removal of the threat of imminent death would do to the self-understanding of a sentient being. What cultural, political projects would such a person pursue? Neither Nietzsche or anyone else for that matter has a clear answer.
http://countercurrents.org/2019/06/last-men-or-new-men-nietzsche-in-the-new-age
! >>>>>> Beware The Sentient Android <<<<<< !
https://www.latimes.com/books-la-ca-je-machines-like-me-mcewan-review-latimess20190423-story.html
https://countercurrents.org/2019/06/last-men-or-new-men-nietzsche-in-the-global-age
https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-machines-like-me-ian-mcewan-review-20190423-story.html
A FB friend of mine lost his mother on that flight. So very sad to destroy a family. Bush was reprehensible his entire life, his B.S. “Thousand Points of Light” a cheap P.R. stunt. A cold-blooded murderer throughout his political career.
He learned well enough from his own blood family and his in-laws—both elements Hitler-supporting enablers.
Oh,, and Ann, I forgot to tell you thank you for all that you do.
Now rectified, and continuing.
I don’t know about any of you, but I’m automatically going to believe everything these people say, every last thing they declare is 100% truthful and factual in my book.
These same people who told us Saddam had WMD and that he was in bed with Al Qaeda, Maduro starves his own people, the CIA never runs guns or drugs, single-payer health insurance is a flawed system in Western Europe, Israel’s a shining beacon of genuine democracy in the Middle East, Gaddafi was sending his soldiers to rape and massacre tens of thousands in Eastern Libya, Russia invaded Ukraine, Assad and Putin were not fighting against mercenary terrorists in Syria, Moscow hacked the ’16 prez election and destroyed power grids in New England.
What have they every lied about? You cynical cretins.
Let’s not forget their recent assurance that Tehran is a leading sponsor of terrorism across the globe.
Glad I didn’t forget this 100% accurate and truthful factoid.
George HW Bush after Shootdown of Iranian Airliner by US Navy:
“I Never Apologize for {the} US”
Iran Air Flight 655 was a civilian jet airliner shotdown by US missiles on 3 July 1988 as it flew over the Strait of Hormuz at the end of the (US sponsored) Iraqi imposed war on Iran. 290 innocent civilians (252 Iranians and 38 non Iranians) died when the US Navy shot down it.
December, 01, 2018 – 14:21 Society/Culture Comments
George HW Bush after Shootdown of Iranian Airliner by US Navy: “I Never Apologize for US”
Speaking to a group of Republican ethnic leaders (7 Aug 1988), George H W Bush, at the time Vice President of the United States in the Reagan administration commented on a separate occasion, saying, “I will never apologize for the United States — I don’t care what the facts are… I’m not an apologize-for-America kind of guy.”
George H W Bush also defended his country’s atrocity against Iranian civilians at the United Nations by arguing that the US attack had been a wartime incident and that the crew of the Vincennes had acted appropriately to the situation.
(these Absolutist quotes ought not be buried inside/within the scope of Imperialist “Plausible Deniability”
ALL OF THE BUSHES ARE COMPLICIT WITH
MASS MURDER, WORLD WIDE, AND
PERSONAL WEALTH CREATION
THRU ZIONIST SEGREGATION
and ROTHSCHILD AFFILIATION
with ZIONIST/APAC World Rule.
The former US President died on Friday at the age of 94, a family spokesman said.
[ PIGS IN THE PARLOR ]
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/dec/01/george-hw-bush-former-us-president-dies-aged-94
Local News and Political commentary get nowhere near a
Deep Rooted sense of The Reality of Truth,
and are, Primarily, NOT FULLY INTERESTED IN
Nor Seeking A Reality of, WHAT IS The TRUTH … .
http://www.talmudblasphemy.com/judaism_vs_zionism.html
And after those 94 years what did it all get him? Other than a small patch of dirt to be planted in?
Um… F’n MacBeath :
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Got any beer? Me and Judge Kavanaugh like beer and broccoli too.
Surely there must be some independent satellites, or radar on nearby civilian ships, that could answer the question?
RE:
“Yet, the U.S. maintained that it was correct in shooting down a civilian aircraft that it said the crew thought was a military aircraft. It took years before the U.S. offered recompense through the International Court of Justice.”
People like Bolton and Cheney think they’re always “correct” even if they are capable of secretly admitting to themselves that they are lying.
The end justifies the means.
Too bad the end they “see” is unjustifiable to the rest of us were we to be allowed to learn the truth that the whistleblowers risk all to expose. The “end” of course is always counter productive to the people who pay for it all, in blood and treasure and puts this country at threat.
It serves the short term interests of a very few. And we’re all supposed to shut up about the huuuuge risks and nasty unintended consequences sure to follow.
Even some of our “scholars” – including some who work at the JFK School of Government – think “National Security Interests” justify keeping the truth hidden and punishing the whistleblowers.
When oh when will we grow up and take responsibility.
“I will never apologize for the United States, I don’t care what the facts are … I’m not an apologize for America kind of guy.”
Then Vice Predident, George H. W. Bush, Aug. 02, 1988.
This is what I remember as the “official” response, Ann.
Unfortunately for us, most of American society doesn’t care what the facts are either.
“I don’t care what the facts are.”
https://youtu.be/10qatUWwIeg
Killing people is wrong. Even when the US does it. So the government lies. So we’ll pretend the killing is all OK.
Gives us a spoonful of sugar make the medicine go down. Rinse, wash, repeat…
https://osociety.org/2019/06/22/debunking-a-century-of-war-lies/
Preparing the invasion of Iran: the US empire regroups its proxies in Afghanistan
http://bit.ly/2JeMWUh
Excellent article. History tells us to never trust anything said by our government or its MSM lackeys. BTW, I believe the word is “transponder”, not transformer.